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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There are two problems with couples counseling.  One is that people rarely, if ever, both go into it with good faith intentions of doing what they can to make the relationship better.  They are going to plead their case and have an authority figure tell the other person how wrong they are.  Second, establishing rapport is the cornerstone of effective therapy and it can't be done with two people who are at odds with each other.

I had a bad counseling experience that the wise list maker's story brought back to me in vivid detail.  For the first couple of sessions dh rambled on and on about how terrible I was and brought up example after example of the horrible things I had done.  It was almost incoherent and consisted of little snippets of things I had said either during an argument or after putting up with some weird bs from him.  He didn't ever explain anything in detail, like we disagreed about x, she said y, then I said z.  It was all she said this, and she does this, and she told me this, with no context whatsoever.  It was hard for me to figure out what he even was referring to and some of the things were just plain made up.  The therapist's response was to say, "wow, that all sounds very terrible; if everything is as bad as you say, why have you stayed in this relationship for so long?"  To me it sounded like she was mocking him, but he took it very seriously and claimed he didn't know why he had put up with me for so long.

At the next session, I scrambled to take notes while he was on his diatribe in the hopes we could discuss each specific comment in detail.  Well, that really ticked him off and made me look bad because his response was to complain that he couldn't concentrate while I was taking notes and I wasn't paying attention and hearing him out.

So how stupid was I to sit there and pay money to listen to him tell someone what a horrible person I was.  I wish it had occurred to me to use wlm's strategy.  What I should have done was walk out and keep walking.

Yes, I can completely relate with this.

[/quote][/quote]

Sorry, meant to write I can completely relate TO this. Marital Counseling is a dream come true for manipulative spouses.

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